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The Office Party

There are many things I love to miss about working in an office, and one of the big ones is the Christmas Party.

I fucking hated them.

There was a bimbo in our office who used to fire up her party enthusiasm around July. The day would come in the middle of summer when she would pipe up that it really was about time we started thinking about booking a venue. Most of us would still be looking forward to our summer holidays, so this wasn’t well received. The air would be thick with flying staplers, ashtrays and other assorted heavy objects, but unfortunately Bimbo was quite good at ducking. And being a Bimbo, she didn’t realise that the missiles aimed in her direction had anything to do with her mention of Christmas.

Over the following months, skirmishes would break out. On one side there would be the crowd who just wanted a quick meal to line the stomach for a good piss-up. On the other would be the ones who wanted a leisurely meal followed by a disco or something. By the time they had sorted their differences, all the venues would be booked up anyway so the whole thing was a bit academic.

Usually we ended up either having the do in some grotty back street restaurant, that no self respecting office party would touch, or we would hold that greatest of nightmares – an office party in the office.

There is nothing worse than holding a party in an office where you spend most of your working day. There is fuck all festive about a computer monitor with a bit of bedraggled tinsel draped across the top. There is nothing Christmassy about a twelve inch high plastic tree decorated with floppy disks.

Worst of all was the boss, who for 364 days in the year is an utter bollix and who suddenly decides that for one day we all have to be best friends with him.

Inevitably at the start of the ‘party’ someone would announce that “this is a party, and no one is to mention work”. That would lead to dead silence, as we had fuck all in common apart from work. So the trick then was to consume as much cheap plonk as quickly as possible so that we could get around to the groping stage without the agonies of forced conversation.

The one advantage of holding the ‘party’ in the office was that we had control over the drinks. Lacing the Bimbo’s fizzy orange with vodka was no problem, and The Boss used to get his beer nicely topped up in the Gents. With the piss he normally drank, he couldn’t tell the difference.

Of course the party always ended in chaos. Bimbo would end up staggering all over the place making a holy show of herself and slurring that the orange was tasting funny, and the Boss would usually end up puking his ring up all over the main desk.

There’s always a wheezy Pat (Irish market) or Lynne (UK market) with every ailment under the sun from alopecia to Woolaroo disease worrying about everything as well. It would be worth banning offices worldwide to rid ourselves of this phenomena whose only purpose in life is to sit next to people at Xmas parties and download their entire NHS treatment record for the year. With photos.